Some companies levy an additional on online purchases fee when you pay with credit card. Many airlines and other online sellers keep charging these fees even though they've been banned since august 2015, but you should be able to remlaim them, typically by filling out a form provided by your CC company and providing evidence, e.g. a printout of your order that lists the various items including the CC fee.

Doing that you're effectively disputing the respective seller's amount, typically this must be done within 30 days of receiving your monthly CC statement (read your CC T&C to be sure).

Examples for such companies are:
Swiss Arilines, Easyjet, Air Berlin, Galaxus, Microspot, etc. (reading their payment options, this also applies to nettoshop.ch).

How/where to get the form (list courtesy to saldo.ch, article in the august '16 issue):
- Migros Cumulus CC: cembra.ch, snail-mail the Beanstandungsformular plus evidence
- viseca CC: viseca.cc, snail-mail the form "Beanstandung einer Transaktion", plus evidence, remember to state the reason
- swisscard CC: online form here
- UBS CC: online form here
- bonuscard.ch (Visa) CC: this PDF
- Postfinance and Cornercard CC: Phone customer service to have the form mailed (Cornercard) or snailmailed (Postfinance) to you

Edit:
This is based on an agreement (EVR III) betwenn the Eidgenössische Wettbewerbskommission and the credit card industry. The Verfügung (decree? executive order?) can be found here. The mail order business association has commented on this multiple times including this one.

Thank you for this.

If I pay with direct debit (e.g. PostFinance), I get no protection.

If I pay with credit card, I get
a) points/miles
b) insurance coverage (depending on the card)
c) possibility to dispute the charges
d) pay 30 days later (ok, we get no interest anyway, but it's the principle).

No brainer that I would always use CC. These fees are extortion fees.

Swiss might ban people who reclaim their credit card fees from booking flights in future or not let them book again until credit card fees are paid.

As alternatives without a fee they mention booking by paying in cash at the desk, paying by debit or Postfinance Card.

Source

Very very liberal measures indeed...

As I understand it (and please someone correct me if I'm wrong), the article is saying that the decision allows credit card companies to refuse the levy, but it doesn't stop any vendor adding a levy, nor does it oblige the credit card companies to refuse the levy. If true, then it's business as usual, and any claim for disputed charges is invalid - even though the credit card companies may pay it (because, I suspect, they don't check claims for small amounts - it's cheaper to just refund).

What vendors should do is hike their prices a little bit and offer discounts for non-CC payments.

__________________
Down with racism. Long live miscegenation!

probably easier to block such people from paying with CCs.

Another newspaper says the same thing http://www.blick.ch/news/wirtschaft/...id5438703.html

Your points/miles as well as your insurance doesn't come for free... the merchants, in this case the airline, finance it with their fees. Swiss says it's unfair to other passengers as they'd simply raise the price for all if they cannot collect CC fees...


Bottom line: CC companies are extorting pretty exorbitant fees from merchants. Customers use CCs for the added value they offer.


Result:
1. Most merchants get screwed.
2. Some powerfull ones, like Aldi, know that consumers will rather accept to not use CCs instead of raised prices, so they throw out CCs completely.
3. Some powerful ones like Swiss don't accept the "agreement" as it isn't a law and was made between the CC companies and the wettbewerbskomission. In other words: nobody asked them. They have a legal standpoint and of course a lever in their market power. I for one would not risk getting banned from booking tickets online with them for a 30 CHF fee.


When it comes to other merchants with less dominant market positions: I either don't buy from them or choose alternative payment methods. Digitec being one of the culprits in the past.

It would be a PR disaster

No they don't. I have a yearly fee from my bank.

Aldi has already started accepting credit cards a while ago. Must be thanks to the recent cap on merchant cc commissions.

Ok, then it must have been Lidl... I know I have one shop that won't take my CC... or they probably just don't take Amex which happens to have both the highes fees for merchants as well as the best goodies for the users...

Lidl takes cc's now too!

I am a 100% certain that I was standing there with a full cart and they did not take them. Must be very new then or maybe not all shops (yet)...

In the past they (Lidl, Aldi) were only accepting debit cards, but that changed recently. First they started accepting them in Germany, already even last year AFAIK, and now also in Switzerland. So far I've been already paying with cc for several months at Lidl Zurich Binz, no issues.

In Espresso (around 04:40, Swiss German): Viseca and Swisscard tell customers to report credit card charges, and they will refund you and later get the money from those who charged you the fees.